Gated Entry

Yet another photo from my minimalism trip to Del Mar. This particular subject caught my eye because of the interesting lines and curves created by a metal entryway gate. I composed the image to include part of the wall as an anchor, and I cropped it to cut off most of the gate and just leave the curves behind. Once I opened it up for processing, I found that there were a lot of really neat textures and saturated colors to be found in there too.

1. Original JPEG
2. Processed RAW
   Just a slight bump in contrast and saturation using ACR.
3. Hard Mix Layer Blend
   Blended at 62% opacity and 32% fill, while using a mask to exclude the tops of the metal bars to prevent overexposure and loss of detail.
4. Curves Adjustment
   A bit of an “S” curve with the same mask (but at 50% gray) to put the finishing touches on the contrast and color. This step also brought out a lot of texture and rust color on the fronts of the metal bars.
5. Sharpening
   Oversharpened at 124%, 2.8 pixels, and threshold of 1 in order to give it more of a “rough” feel.

** You can also see this photo on Flickr and Zooomr **

Photo by Brian Auer
09/22/07 Del Mar, CA
Gated Entry
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Konica Minolta AF DT 18-200
225mm equiv * f/6.7 * 1/350s * ISO100